


True North

by Greysgate



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 06:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14687985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greysgate/pseuds/Greysgate
Summary: The night of Daniel's ascension, Jack gets his catharsis where he can.





	True North

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first Stargate fic, written in 2003 under the name aaaaaahz.
> 
> There was no real exploration of what Daniel's death would do to Jack O'Neill in the series. This was my take on it.

_The Kelownans make great beer. ‘Course I only got a taste of it. I was on duty, after all._

Jack O’Neill sits at his desk, the only light on in the house illuminating the journal open beneath his hand. Beside it sits a bottle of whisky and a glass. His eyes lift to take in the label on the bottle as he gathers his thoughts.

**Jack Daniels.**

He turns the bottle to the side so he can’t see the writing on it and drops his eyes to the page again. 

_I wasn’t there when it happened. Carter was off at some industrial complex not far from the main facility where they had their Stargate. Teal’c and I were on a tour of the city, getting a feel for who these people were. The beer was of definite interest to me, and Teal’c was on my six, watching and taking it all in, like he always does._

_That was when the call came in on the comm. unit. Daniel’s voice was strained when he called the Code Red. Took us nearly twenty minutes to get back there._

_Twenty minutes for Daniel to sit in that holding cell under guard. Took their doctor two minutes to decide he was gonna die. But they didn’t say that right away. I didn't know what was happening until Carter explained it back at our base. All I knew was that Daniel was hurt, and he was quiet._

_That’s always a bad sign._

_Of course, they told us their version of things. Daniel sabotaged their experiment, tried to blow ‘em all up because he disagreed philosophically with what they were doing. Right. _

_That’s when they let us in to see him._

_He was sitting on the side of a bunk, holding his arm and rocking. Biting his lower lip. Grimacing. Had to be hurting like hell, but he didn’t make a sound._

_He smiled at me. It was an apology, but I didn’t know what for then. “Hi, Jack,” he said, oh so casually. “They gonna let me go home?”_

_He took it all so calmly. Accusations of sabotage, and notice of imminent death all in the same breath. No word of thanks, no appreciation for his sacrifice; just political tap dancing, mistrust and lies._

_Compassionate grounds , they said. _

_“Yeah. You ready?” I asked him._

_He stumbled a little as he got to his feet but wouldn’t let anybody touch him. Then we all headed back to the ‘gate, back home. In the infirmary, I asked him what really happened, but he skirted around the subject, said it didn't really matter. Maybe not to the Kelownans or the SGC, but it mattered to me. _

_He never told me, now that I think about it. Didn't want to lay blame. Didn't want to point the finger at somebody else and say, "They killed me with their stupidity." Even though that's exactly what happened._

_He also didn’t say, “I saved everybody’s lives,” even though he did. Mine included. He’s not boastful about the things that matter. He shies away from the word “hero” when people try to apply it to him, because he’s modest like that._

_None of us knew what really happened on Kelowna till Jonas Quinn spilled the beans. Him I believed, because it sounded like something Daniel would do. It was perfectly in character. Jonas -- I don't know him. Good intentions aside, he's shown his true colors already. He'll buckle under pressure from his superiors. He'll lie and he'll steal as long as it serves his personal sense of right and wrong. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to trust him, not after he lied his ass off when it all started._

_I trust Daniel._

_Trusted. He’s dead now. _

Jack’s eyes rove over the words he’s just written. His fingers brush against the blank page on the left and he studies the journal. A lump forms in his throat. He swallows it down with a long draught of whisky.

_This journal was gonna be Daniel’s birthday present. I got it off world and put it away for the big day. Guess it’s mine now. Lots of pages to fill and nothing to say._

He pours another glass and downs it without even feeling the burn.

_Can’t wipe that look out of my mind. He was sitting on the bed in the infirmary after Frasier got done with him, calmly telling me how he was gonna die. His eyes – oh, God! Panic and fear mixed in with the pain. Terrified of what was coming, and no way to stop it or change it. Knowing it was gonna happen, and exactly how in all its gory, mind-numbing detail. And then he smiled at me, to comfort me. _

_I couldn’t have done that. I couldn’t have been that calm._

_Course, I know why he was. He didn’t want to upset me. He didn’t want to hurt me. He wanted me to think he had accepted the situation; that he was okay with the inevitable, even though I know him well enough to know he wasn’t good to go. _

_Always thinking of others. That’s Daniel. I’ll miss that, I guess._

Jack’s eyes burn. He lifts his left hand and rubs them. It’s very late, and he should get some sleep. But he’s not ready to face the darkness yet, or the images that will come in dreams.

_I don’t get this ascension crap. I saw the visions and can’t explain them. Somehow, Daniel was in my head, telling me goodbye, telling me to let him go. I did what he wanted._

_Now what am I supposed to do? _

_Hammond will no doubt saddle us with another egghead, rather than restructure of the team to all military. We’re supposed to be the primary explorers, the intel gatherers, with a little diplomacy thrown in. I’ve already tried half a dozen of the SGC geeks when Daniel’s been with other teams or eyeball deep in some research project he ~~can’t~~ couldn’t turn loose of. Don’t like ‘em. Don’t want ‘em. The only one I could stand was Daniel, and for all the grief I gave him – _

Jack raises his eyes to the picture he can’t see at the other end of the room, over the fireplace mantle, cloaked in shadows. It is a photograph someone took of the team off world. He doesn’t have to see it to know the looks on each face. He is smiling and proud of the company he is keeping. Carter’s face is touched with wonder and the joy of doing a job she desperately loves more than anything. Teal’c is impassive as always, with a gleam of righteousness in his eyes.

But Daniel’s face is drawn. A frown settles heavily in those thick brows. Daniel looked like that a lot during the last few years. And Jack knew why. 

_…for all the grief I gave him, he was a good man. Probably the best I’ve ever known. And I never told him. Not once. I never showed him that I appreciated his wisdom, for he was wise. I’ve lived long enough to know that gray hair doesn’t make anybody wise. If it did, I’d be some sort of guru by now. Wisdom comes from pain, from the experience of damn hard lessons, really heavy shit. _

_Skaara said it best, I think. “ O’Neer is strong. Danyer is wise.” I kept trying to make Daniel strong. He kept trying to make me wise. He changed for me, but I wouldn’t change for him.   _

_Daniel never talked about how he got that way. Oh, I know about his parents dying when he was a kid, and the foster homes. I was there for Sha’re and all the stuff that came after that, but for somebody a couple decades younger than me to be so damn much older in soul -- there were reasons for that, and I never knew what they were. He kept his secrets close to the vest, chatty as he was. Talked about anything and everything but himself._

_Now that I think about it, I never really knew him. I knew his thoughts and opinions because they came out of his mouth in a constant stream. I got to hear endless evidence of how fucking smart he was. But he didn’t talk about himself, about the things that hurt him or what made him the way he was._

_All I did was demand that he change. Be a man, not a pussy. Be a soldier, not a geek. And shut the hell up._

_I think it started between us with the hair. It was part of the geek suit he wore, and at first I accepted that. Over time, I began to understand that he didn’t cut it because he forgot so often, didn’t really care about his appearance. He was too busy with other things. Then as I watched him, I saw what he used the hair for. It was a curtain that hid his face when he was upset or embarrassed. A defense mechanism. Camouflage, if you will. And after Hathor’s people butchered it before putting us in those cryochambers (why they did that we’ll never know), I stayed after him to keep it cut in more military fashion. He did it because I wanted it, but I didn’t get how much he needed it long. I stripped him of that, of part of his armor. _

_The glasses did that for him, too. At first, he had them on constantly. As time wore on, I got that he didn’t need them all the time, just for reading. They were another kind of shield for him, and as he got more comfortable with his role in the SGC, as we trained him to be tougher, he started pushing them up on his head, hanging them on his shirt and leaving them all over the place. He was becoming something else, but I didn’t see it then._

_I do now. He was so unhappy with everything the last year or so. He didn’t look like a geek anymore. He looked like a soldier. I remade his outside in my image, but I couldn’t change what he was inside. I didn’t really want to. As much of a pain in the ass as he was sometimes, he was always there for me, for the team. He could be covering his head, scared shitless with death rays flying all around us one minute, and risking his life without a thought to save someone else the next. He was always so clueless when it came to soldiering, but he picked up enough to stay alive._

_Except this time._

_This time, his heart got in the way of his head. Oh, he saved our lives and those of the Kelownans from a nuclear disaster, sure. Saved us when we didn’t even know we were in danger. And laid down his life to do it without hesitation. He had to know as he was trying to find a way to break into that room that the radiation would kill him. That’s just the way he was._

Jack stares at the page, remembering. He drinks another glass of whisky, his hand shaking now as he sets the glass down on the blotter. Then he pours and swallows another, images like liquid fire saturating his mind, all of them of the face he would never see again.

_Jiminy Cricket. That’s what Daniel was. When my nose got longer, he’d whittle it back down for me. Not that I’m a habitual liar, it’s more that he was—_

The page swims slightly. Jack blinks several times and it clears. But his throat hurts. It is closing up tightly. He takes another drink to relax it again, and now his head is swimming, too. 

_...he was my conscience, my reminder of things that are good and right._

_He kept trying to teach me things, only I didn’t want to listen. That didn’t go both ways, though. He’d gamely strap on a pair of inline skates and try his damndest to hit a puck on my driveway, even though he hated it. I knew that, but I kept pushing him, trying to make him an athlete, make him get physical and learn how to live in his body instead of all up in his head._

_He doesn’t have to do that anymore. His body just sort of went away when the dying part was over, so there’s not even anything to bury. It was a long, ugly, painful death. He didn’t deserve that._

_He was a hero. And nobody on this world will ever know, except us. No medals, no ceremonies, no announcements in the newspaper so those who knew him out in the world will understand what they lost. Because nobody really cared about Daniel Jackson but a handful of people beneath a mountain in Colorado._

_It’s their goddamn loss. The whole fucking world has lost something we can’t ever get back—_

“Ah, Jeez,” he moans, and the first tears begin to fall. Tears of anger and regret. Tears of frustration and pain. Grief flows down his face in warm rivers, and he puts his head down on the backs of his hands, folded now on the page. His shoulders shake with sobs no one can hear.

No one will ever know how much this tragedy has affected him, because that’s not his style. He will return to work in the morning with dry eyes, moving a little slower perhaps, not as quick with the joke. His sense of humor might vanish entirely for a few days, but that will be appropriate in the wake of this event that will cast a pall over the entire base for a time. People will understand. 

But they will never see _this_ , the tears he sheds in private, the grief that rips his soul to shreds. This is personal, a place where no one in his life has ever been… except the one he has lost. Daniel always seemed to know, to find some way to connect with him when he was devastated. It might be only a glance or a touch on the shoulder. It could be a faint smile from a mouth grown silent in understanding. But Daniel always knew. And with him around, Jack was never quite the island he pretended to be. 

And now Daniel was gone. Gone forever. Ascended to a higher plane. 

“That’s fucking bullshit!” Jack growls, sitting angrily upright and scrubbing his eyes with his sleeve. “He’s just dead! Just fucking gone.” He stands up, grabbing the empty glass and hurling it across the room with a roar of soul-deep anguish. It shatters against the mantle, bringing the photograph down with it. 

He sits back down heavily. There is no satisfaction in the destruction. There is no consolation, no assurance. This can never be made right. As with Charlie’s death, it will leave a hole in his soul that nothing and no one else can ever fill. 

“Charlie,” he whispers to the empty room. His eyes fall on the page, upon the words he has written. He scratches the last two lines out. 

 _In some ways, Daniel reminded me of Charlie. I guess that’s what I—_  

He swallows hard. Even writing the word is difficult, though no one will ever read the page but himself. He reaches for the bottle and takes a long pull on it. As he sets it back down, his eye catches the label again.

Jack… Daniels. 

The tears begin again, this time slow and silent. 

_…what I loved about him. There was always something of the little boy who never grew up in Daniel, something innocent that needed protecting. Damn sorry job I did of that. _

_But self-pity isn’t what I’m writing about now. I want to put this down while it’s still fresh in my heart, so I can go back and remind myself, when I need it. When I need him. _

_Daniel was the conscience of SG-1. He was our heart, our emotional center, the bleeding-heart liberal who cared about everyone who crossed his path. But he was also much more than that._

_He was our shining example of the fact that being “only human” could be something great and noble, instead of just an excuse for screwing the pooch. Like Jiminy Cricket, he was our moral compass, our true north, there to remind us when we couldn’t see the Big Picture._

_He never, ever lost sight of that. I did it all the time. Carter and Teal’c just followed my lead without question, the way soldiers are supposed to do. Daniel was the one in my face when I was wrong, grabbing me by the integrity and giving me a shake. That got harder and harder for him to do, and I know it hurt him. I could see it in his eyes, in that hang-dog look he wore all the time lately. He got quieter over the last few months, till he almost didn’t try any more. I don’t know whether he just gave up on me, or if I just ignored the effort out of him._

_Either way, it was a long, slow, painful death for him. He was almost gone by the time we got to Kelowna. The radiation poisoning was just the final nail in the coffin, the last thing that made his departure permanent._

_Took me some deep thinking and a lot of booze to see that._

His hand shakes, holding the pen in a death grip as the truth finally dawns.

_The Kelownans didn’t kill Daniel._

_I did._

_And now I’m lost, with no way to get home again._

_Every time I look at Jonas Quinn’s face, I’m going to see Daniel instead. I hope they stick him in research so I don’t have to see him very often. With my luck, Hammond will probably put him on my team instead._

_It would be fitting punishment._

_No one can ever take Daniel’s place. I know that now. I should have listened. I should have taken better care of him as a friend. I should have done a lot of things, none of which matter now._

_I will never be able to tell him I’m sorry. I’ll never make him smile or laugh again, and I wish to God there had been more of that between us. I’ll never—_

The memory of the two of them sitting on the floor in a dark storeroom, a beam of light from the hallway outside casting long shadows behind them comes suddenly, painfully to the fore. He remembers the feel of Daniel in his arms, shaking with need as he struggled to overcome his addiction to the sarcophagus, holding onto his CO like an anchor to sanity. Jack could still smell the scent of his skin and hair and sweat, that olfactory signature that was uniquely Daniel’s.

_…I’ll never hold him while he cries out his pain, trusting me like a brother with his broken heart. He’s off on some cloud, communing with the angels or something. He knows everything now. He can see me writing in this journal and know before I put pen to paper what I’m going to say. Part of him will be happy that I’m learning from this experience. Part of him may be sad for how much this tears me up, but he’s probably above all that now. I hope he is, anyway._

_I keep trying to wrap my mind around this, and what it means. I know he has a soul – saw it rising up from where his body had been like some sort of glowy, squidified thing, floating away to who knows where. Did he go to Heaven?_

_I don’t think he’ll be happy there. Don’t know why, it’s just a feeling. Maybe when Carter and Teal’c get there, he’ll be okay. Hope he doesn’t wait up for me, though, because that’s not where I’m going. And now that he’s gone, I’m more sure of that than ever._

He glances at his chronometer and sees how much time has flown by in this unfamiliar exercise. He rises to start the coffee, hoping he’ll have enough time to get sober before he goes to the base, but certain inebriation would be forgiven this time, considering. Still, he can’t afford for anyone to know he’s been drinking. Not on _this_ night. 

Tomorrow has to be business as usual.

Returning to the desk, he caps the bottle of whisky and returns it to the liquor cabinet. Then he waits in the kitchen for the coffee to brew, pours himself a cup and carries it back to the desk. He takes up the pen and prepares to sit down and write. 

But there is something new on the page, something that wasn’t there when he left.  

He stares at it, at the handwriting as familiar as his own. 

_“ **Loss and possession, death and life are one.**_

**_There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.” -- Hilaire Belloc  
_ **

**_Forgive yourself, Jack. I have._ **

**_\-- DJ_ **

Jack O’Neill raises his head and surveys the silent, shadowed room. 

“Still here, Daniel?” he murmurs. “I thought you’d be long gone.” He sighs. “No need to hang around for me. I’ll be fine.”

He feels suddenly, inexplicably warm along his chest and arms, and in a narrow path across his shoulders and the back of his neck, as if someone he couldn’t see had embraced him. He raises his eyes, fighting off the tears, but they come anyway. “I can’t do this without you,” he whispers hoarsely. “Not and do it right, anyway. You _know_ I’m gonna fuck everything up. That’s what I do best.” 

The warmth gets warmer, sinking into his chest, to temper the fire burning around his heart and soothe it away. 

“Don’t know what you’re tryin’ to say,” he says to the shadows. “Why don’t you come out and tell me to my face?” 

For a moment, there is no movement or sound as he stares, waiting for something to happen, for the ghost or a vision to appear. When it does not, he sits back down at the desk, heart as heavy as lead. 

He looks back at the book. The quotation and extra lines are gone now, and something else has been written in that spectral hand. He peers at it. 

**Be good to yourself. Trust your heart and learn from it. I’ll be watching your six.**

**And remember that I love you. Always.  **

The words vanish slowly off the page, as if the ink is soaking into the paper and becoming totally absorbed, leaving not a trace of itself behind. 

Jack takes up the pen again.

_He’s trying to tell me I’m better than that, but I’m not. Never have been. Daniel always saw the best in people, what made them good. I don’t have much of that. He had to work harder with me and he did that valiantly, because I was important to him for some reason._

_Haven't figured that part out just yet._

_So now I’m sitting in this comfy hand basket on my way to Hell, without him to be my guide to somewhere else. I haven’t got a chance of redemption now. But that’s okay._

_I don’t deserve it, not after what I did to Daniel._

_And the Kelownans can keep their goddamn beer. _

He lifts the cup of coffee, watching the steam rise above it. For an instant, he thinks he sees the tendrils form into the shape of a pair of spectacles. He thinks about how much Daniel loved coffee, and he smiles. Just a little. 

“Have a great afterlife,” he says to the steam. “You’ll be missed.” 

He pauses, looking at the page where those kindly philosophical words of affection once were, still able to see them clearly in his mind. 

He sighs and sets the cup back on the saucer. Closing his eyes, he presses his palms against them wearily.  

“I loved you, too, Daniel. Should have told you that.” 

He puts his head down on the desk to rest for a moment, and his breathing slows as sleep settles over him like a blanket.  

From the shadows a Being emerges, dressed in pale clothing. He is radiant, and moves with silent steps toward the desk. Gently, he touches the sleeping man on the shoulder, rubbing his back fondly. Jack stirs slightly and exhales a soft sob, but does not waken. A tear seeps over his nose and falls onto the page in the shape of a rounded star. 

“I knew,” Daniel whispered. “You didn’t have to say the words, old friend.” 

He bends down and places his lips against the back of Jack’s head. 

A moment later, he is gone. 

FIN  



End file.
